Why America Must Reassure, Not Just Threaten, China |
China’s growing military strength and its increasingly aggressive posture toward Taiwan have made deterrence in the Taiwan Strait a tougher challenge than ever before, write Bonnie Glaser, Jessica Chen Weiss, and Thomas Christensen in a new essay from the forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs. As the United States works to shore up Taipei’s security, Washington is focused on expanding its military capabilities in the region.
“But deterrence is not just a matter of weapons in arsenals, boots on the ground, planes in the air, ships at sea, or strategies on the planning table,” Glaser, Weiss, and Christensen write. “It also takes assurances to keep potential adversaries at bay.” Therefore, alongside its military buildup, Washington must make clear to Beijing that the United States’ intentions are not aggressive and that a military response would be fully conditional on China’s behavior. As the authors write, “A threatened state has little incentive to avoid war.”
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